BOSILLIAC WILDFLOWER NURSERY

You may have had a chance to take a day out to visit the County Spring Flower Show at Heligan or the Royal Cornwall Show. We put on wildflower displays at both these events and received a lot of interest from the public. Many people were keen on creating wildflower meadows in their gardens or adjoining fields. This was an opportunity to talk about different grasses and plants and how to manage this kind of grassland.

A start has been made on creating a wildflower meadow area at Bosilliac Nursery, so that people can come along and see how it works. The grass has been sown, using a mix of crested dog's-tail, red fescue and common bent; there is also annual meadow grass and a little Yorkshire fog. This summer I will collect seed of meadow flowers from wild sites in Cornwall, bring them back to the nursery to germinate and grow them into plugs to plant into the meadow next spring. I will choose flowers such as black knapweed, bird's-foot trefoil, yarrow, tufted vetch, meadow buttercup, self-heal, oxeye daisy, perforate St John's-wort, musk mallow and field scabious. The fertility in the soil is still quite high, but we will endeavour to reduce this by cutting and removing the grass each year. It is very important to get the soil fertility down so that the grass doesn't grow too vigorously and crowd out the wild flowers. Creating a wildflower meadow takes quite a long time, so it's best not to be in too much of a hurry. The yellow bartsia that came up last year has increased this year and looks lovely. I suspect it will decline again now that the grass has established, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

Looking towards next spring already, we will be able to supply members with spring bulbs. Please telephone me at Bosilliac Nursery on (01326) 250922 to check availability and I will send details, which will include a price list. The bulbs will be available for planting during September and October, and I can assure members that the bulbs are grown on a nursery, not collected from the wild. The species will include wild daffodil, wood anemone and snowdrop. It is important that these bulbs and corms are not planted out into wild sites, particularly Sites of Special Scientific Interest, as this could upset the species balance of those areas.

Collection of orders from Bosilliac Nursery can be arranged or packages can be collected from our shop at 2 Market Place, Penzance.

Lorna Crewes